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Simple jobs made difficult

Changing a fuse should be easy, right?  Not in my kitchen, it isn’t.

The kitchen has a built-in fridge, washing machine and microwave oven (all from the same manufacturer).  Which is all fine and dandy, but which idiot decided that each appliance should have its own electrical socket? 

Fuses are designed to blow if there is a problem, and it is supposed to be very easy to replace them.  Isn’t it?

Well, replacing the fuse is easy, of course, but to get at the plug you need to pull the appliance right out.  Each appliance has its own purpose-built slot, so you can’t easily get hold of them – or move them from side-to-side – to ease them out.  The fridge is huge and almost impossible to move, and of course washing machines are deliberately designed to be very heavy.  OK, so the microwave is a bit easier.

It’s a triumph of form over function.  Yes, it looks neat and tidy to have the plugs and cables hidden away where you can’t see them, but no-one has thought about changing the fuse.  Won’t happen, right?

Surely there must be a simple solution?  I’m not an expert by any means, but couldn’t they, er make a hole (like the ones they have in most desks these days) for the power cable, so that the plug could go into an accessible socket?  Or how about some sort of arrangement where the plug itself doesn’t have a fuse but you have a fuse or circuit-breaker somewhere else.  Somewhere, you know, accessible.

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2 responses to “Simple jobs made difficult”

  1. HKMACS avatar
    HKMACS

    I can’t think of any occasion that the fuse goes in the plug of an appliance, although that’s the way it’s supposed to work. Either in the main fusebox or heaven forbid if it’s a hot, humid night, the main trip-fuse that only your electric co. can unlock from outside your flat!

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  2. 28481k avatar
    28481k

    HKMACS,
    You should know that Hong Kong follows British wiring standards, which means a ring system is used to connect all sockets in a space rather than a star system that connect each individual socket individually.
    As a result, each plug usually requires a fitted fuse to the maximum allowed current of that particular appliance to prevent serial knock out to the rest of the ring circuit. Although, for self-fitted plugs it is usually taken to be 13A even though that exceeds the allowed current ratings. Anyway, that means at times, the fuse at the plug blows up as well as the circuit breaker is tripped. Hence, the need for easy access of a fuse becomes apparent.
    However, I think for the fridge and the washing machine there won’t be connected the kitchen ring circuit anyway: they should have individual branch of circuit instead. However, I can’t tell whether they put a fuse at the connection point (the plug and socket is usually fused for that) as well as at the fuse box.

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